Print
Word
PDF
|
| Name: _________________________ | Period: ___________________ |
This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.
Short Answer Questions
1. On the fall night when the narrator realizes that his relationship with Gin is over, what are they arguing about?
2. To what does the narrator compare the other lovers on the beach?
3. What characteristic of the area around the beach is conveyed with its nickname, the "Gold Coast"?
4. What does Gin believe is true about the dead woman on the beach?
5. Which detail of the narrator's description of their kisses indicates the passage of time?
Short Essay Questions
1. What plot events--one immediate and one later--are foreshadowed by the narrator's description of "the bodies of lovers...visible in lightning flashes, scattered like the fallen on a battlefield" (234)?
2. What does Gin dream about the dead woman and her grandmother's cottage?
3. What is the inclusion of details about the House of Dong intended to convey?
4. What does the narrator say might have happened if the dead woman had washed up beside them while he and Gin were trying to have sex on the beach, and why is Gin so offended?
5. What is the rhetorical purpose of including the narrator's loss of the condom right before the drowned woman's body is discovered?
6. What is the rhetorical effect of the diction used in the following description of the setting at Oak Street Beach: "The lake had turned hot pink, rose rapture, pearl amethyst with dusk, then washed in night black with a ruff of silver foam. Beyond a momentary horizon, silent bolts of heat lightning throbbed" (234)?
7. What scenario does Gin keep thinking about after the night on Oak Street Beach?
8. What point about the relationship between men and women is made by the details the narrator observes on his train ride home after the night at Oak Street Beach?
9. Where are some of the places listed in the poem's opening paragraph, and how do they convey the couple's youth?
10. What is foreshadowed by the page 233 description of their "lover's lane"?
Essay Topics
Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:
Essay Topic 1
Write an essay that makes and defends a claim about the purpose of the shifting moods Dybek creates in "We Didn't." Be sure to support your assertions with evidence from the text.
Essay Topic 2
Write an essay in which you make and defend a claim regarding the inclusion of religious imagery in "We Didn't." Use textual evidence to support your assertions, and if you consult outside sources be sure to credit them in MLA format.
Essay Topic 3
Write an essay in which you analyze the strategies that Dybek uses to build the tension that conveys the narrator's sexual desire. Comment on how the use of these strategies to build tension changes after the discovery of the body on the beach, and why. Use textual evidence to support your claims.
|
This section contains 1,210 words (approx. 5 pages at 300 words per page) |
|
